Great commander

jacomanring

Chieftain
Joined
Jul 18, 2008
Messages
90
I have a question about GC (or Great General, as you prefer).

When I form an army under a GC, I don't have to send the GC himself with his army to let him earn XP from combat, right? I mean, I let my GC in a city and send his army through erebus killing stuff and earning XP for him?

I'm sorry if the questions sounds (or, actually, IS) stupid...it's only I suspected there was some other mechanism...such as GC would earn more XP if it is in the same stack of his army (and not comfortably sitting in a city, far from the war front) or something like that...

By the way, I love the new mod!

Thanks
 
I have a question of my own... If I attack an enemy from my tile to an adjacent tile with a minion (who's commander has a current-tile only range), will he get the benefits of his commander during the attack, or do I need to get the increased range for that, and thus without the range boost, only gain those benefits on defense?
 
Awright, thanks. Seems like a stupid question after learning that.

Edit: ... Would it be possible to make the description of the command promotions describe what the promotions they give their minions does?
 
Adding that could get potentially huge in the description though, especially if the command promotion gives something which gives a command promotion in turn. Links in the pedia should be sufficient I would think, except maybe in Multiplayer games where you want to act quickly?
 
Hrm, I don't recall any of the command promotions actually doing that... Oh, wait, the General's one? I understand the description getting too long part, but considering how long some of the other tool-tip boxes get, I didn't think it was that big of a deal.

Anyway, yah, it was mainly for multi-player, because I don't like to have to open up the civilopedia (or go back a couple of pages) just to find out what the promotion does before I choose it.
 
First game is with Bannor, and I'm having a ball with the commanders. I sort of wonder if they can be targeted by assassins, no one my stack of doom has encountered has been capable of fielding one, and besides which when every one of your melee troops has the "Guardsman" promotion... well, I guess your command units wouldn't be at risk anyhow.

Think I saw in the bug thread someone already mentioned the problem of a sergeant following a sergeant, think I experienced a similar problem where a GC was eligible to follow a hunter who was part of his army (giving the order caused a CTD), but I am curious if a GC could follow a higher ranked GC. Example, could "Captain" Morselius (a GC) follow the newly minted "General" Lord Traver Dunstead (another GC)?

Also, hard to tell what options are open when you have a big stack, sometimes seem like if you quit all armies, your troops have the "join" abilities again but goodness knows who they'll pick. I guess moving your armies or potential armies, unit by unit into open ground to "organize / micromanage" is the sole option? Again, if you have multiple GCs who, as noted, seem not to be able to follow each other, I found I'd have a massive melee army under the best GC, then the "also rans" would end up with assorted disciples, arcanes, archers, etc. Again though, they'd sort of have to be organized out in a field somewhere.

I guess a final observation, I ended up doing more unit naming and associated "organization" in this system than I think I've ever done before, just to remember who's who (or who can benefit who and in what situations). Mostly it was "flavor" names, like a gaggle of Stonewardens: Corporal Agate, Corporal Ruby, Sgt. Slate, Master Sgt. Granite, etc., but I might have to start getting into alphabetical or numerical conventions to even have the remotest clue of who is "linked" to who. Example, Master Sergeant Albertus has Sergeant Andros & Sergeant Aisha, who have Corporals Alvin, Akasha, Axeblood and Ankh under them... but there's also Master Sergeant Bambur with Sgts Boval & Bronte, and Cpls Bryce, Britak, Bink and Boris... you get the picture. Each brigade ends up having to have a special purpose like all the A's are city raiders, all the B's are for handling melee units, all the C's are mounted line harassing workers or pillaging within a short radius of the stack, all the D's are siege, again, you get the picture.

Again, feels like a fun system, guess if someone's playstyle already revolved around "stacks of doom", this takes it to the next level, ha ha.
 
One afterthought... high level Great Commanders don't seem to "count" in terms of capability of freeing Brigit. Found this out after a real long walk for "General" Lord Dunstead. This is probably a good thing though, these units gobble up XP fast!
 
One afterthought... high level Great Commanders don't seem to "count" in terms of capability of freeing Brigit. Found this out after a real long walk for "General" Lord Dunstead. This is probably a good thing though, these units gobble up XP fast!

It's probably because he cant attack, rather than a specific block for Great Commanders.
 
It's probably because he cant attack, rather than a specific block for Great Commanders.

We've been discussing a change to the ring of Carcer which would, as a side effect, make this possible. By removing the brigit unit from there, and instead just making it a python effect on entering the tile. Mostly to prevent bugs like the recently reported brigit fighting barbarians outside the ring.
 
One afterthought... high level Great Commanders don't seem to "count" in terms of capability of freeing Brigit. Found this out after a real long walk for "General" Lord Dunstead. This is probably a good thing though, these units gobble up XP fast!

I have the opposite problem. My units attached to my commander level very fast leaving the comander in the dust. They got to levels 14, 12, and 11 while he is still level 6.
 
I have the same problem in my game (first real game of FF since the patch, because when I tried to play when I got it 3 minutes or so after release, my laptop's mouse was spazzing uncontrollably and I had class after that)... I think your only real choice for that is to basically cycle the minions of the general every couple of levels... Perhaps a stack of 6 units for the one GC with a command limit of 3 would work. Haven't really tested that... Since the game is with my brother, I'll likely continue it and try that in about... I'd say 4 hours.
 
Another interesting wrinkle, probably working as designed, I now have a collection of Bannor "GGs" (generated from combat XP) following my one and only traditional "GC" (a Great Commander bonus from researching some Military tech or other first).

So basically the armies look like a giant pyramid scheme thingy, "Ducet the Patient" was overtop of Dunstead, Morselius, Hyskos, and Reboha. Ducet has that little "Regimental Discipline" icon with the red highlighted number "935" on top of it due to everyone feeding into that. Basically meant a stack of doom cracking a city, with him as part of the mix, got him around 1200xp in a couple of turns... far more than I'd ever need except for all the healing, nameless promotions at the top of the chain.

Anyhow, yeah, maybe working as designed, but I guess my previous lament about "GCs" not being able to command each other is amended to "it seems the combat generated ones can't, but they can answer to a RARE great person based GC." Neat stuff.
 
Yeah, the 935 shouldn't happen. As of Patch A it won't.

Right now there is a bug where if a unit is following someone with a command range of 1, it over-applies the Regimental Discipline to the leaders of his leader. So only a bug that appears with the Bannor, but basically if you have a Seargent (or Master Sergeant) leading a Corporal (or Sergeant) and following someone else, that "Someone else" will gain more and more XP each time you move the 3 of them as a stack. You could "quickfix" this by granting 1 Command Range to Sergeant. The bug will still exist, but it won't happen when moving an army as a stack, so won't come up often.


Glad to hear people are having fun with it and naming troops and getting into Roleplay aspects instead of boring mechanical names (even when planning a mechanical framework for the fun names ;)).


One way to control who joins who is to group the units you want to be following each other together, then cast the spell. Each unit will join the lowest ranking unit in the same group as themselves they possibly can. If there isn't anyone in their group they can follow, then they join the lowest ranking unit on the tile who they can join.


So select a General, 2 Captains, 4 Master Seargents, 6 Seargents and a handful of Corporals and click the button, they will all slot into place in a nice chain of command.



Also, Great Commanders can join under other Great Commanders, but only if one is a Captain (which all are) and the other is a General (Level 20+). They can also follow a normal unit who has made it to General before the GC managed to.
 
Glad to hear people are having fun with it and naming troops and getting into Roleplay aspects instead of boring mechanical names (even when planning a mechanical framework for the fun names ;)).

HA I name all my General's. I have melee, mounted, archery, etc... specialists so I modify their names to reflect what they do like "Geoff 1st Calvery". As well People such as "Riviana Lord of Bamolar" (or what ever the name of the city they are defending is) helps me keep it straight when I get more than one general in the same square.
 
Y<SNIP>Also, Great Commanders can join under other Great Commanders, but only if one is a Captain (which all are) and the other is a General (Level 20+). They can also follow a normal unit who has made it to General before the GC managed to.

Thanks for all the other comments above this one, clarified a few things for me nicely.

I am not quite sure I've experienced what's in the snippet above though.

Basically, I have something like 5 "combat generated" GCs. The first one of them (Lord Dunstead) was the first big time leader, tons of XP feeding into him, all the rest of the GCs were second bananas. All were Bannor Captains to start with, Dunstead managed to ascend to General. I "emptied" all the armies and tried to get it so the lesser Captains would end up following the General, couldn't achieve that.

As stated in a post above though, when a "GPP / tech award" GC came along (Ducet the Patient), all the other combat generated guys, the General and four Captains, were happy to follow him. Or, well, were happy to fill his initial slots, and the quick feeding of bugged XP (935 worth of regimental discipline) meant he increased his command slots pretty darn fast, same with grabbing every other conceivable promotion.

Anyhow, it sounds like odds and ends little fixes will come in the system with patches, I've abandoned the Bannor game at this point as it was a runaway success, possibly due to the heavy diet of XP for the army commanders, didn't feel like mopping up the whole map for Domination/Conquest, heheh.
 
Sorry, just woke up so not sure I am reading it completely clearly:

You said that a freshly popped GC was able to be assigned as a leader for a standard unit who had attained the rank of General? If so, that is a relatively huge bug. Was it a true Great Commander, or the Bannor unique replacement a Captain? The Bannor UU starts with the Captain promotion, that promotion is what forbids him to lead a General. Anyone who doesn't have ANY rank promotions, but has a command limit somehow (ie - all Creat Commanders except the Bannor Captain) will be considered to outrank a General.

This means: Someone without any rank promotions cannot follow anybody else if the other person has a Command Limit. And anyone with a rank promotion can follow a person who has a command limit without having any rank promotions.

ie - Unranked people count as 1 promotion better than a General in terms of "You cannot outrank your commander"



Also you stated that there was an issue having some Bannor Captains who hadn't promoted to General successfully follow a Bannor Captain who DID promote to General? Would love to have a savegame from that if one exists still so I can see what was going wrong with them. Should have been willing to follow the higher ranked unit.
 
I've gone back into my saves, did a bunch of army quits and rejoins, and at least with the saves I do have, the GC with a General Promotion was able to lead a GC Captain. Maybe I tried during the same turn he first became a general and it was no good, don't have saves going back that far... that's also when a Captain was offering to follow one of his own men (i.e., "Britak", a little hunter guy, was reporting to a guy, but that guy had the option to join the army of Britak"). *shrugs*

I did also determine how the heck I got a NON-CAPTAIN guy while playing the Bannor.

I was playing Decius the Conqueror of the Archos, Calabim and Chislev. The GC "popped" due to combat XP in a random city, turned out to be Prespur, a former Calabim city. It turns out he was born, well, like any other GC would be in a non-Calabim city. Wonder what would've happened had I conquered some Dural and a GC popped in their former city?

Anyhow, that meant it was a GC without any rank, yet having command slots. This it seems meant even Generals would follow him. Maybe this'd work with Donal Lugh too, I think he was born with one command slot, right?

Sounds then like I know how the General could follow a different, newly popped GC, it's because the new GC was born "rankless." Additionally I feel I must've made some error in army management when I couldn't get Captains to follow a General. My bad!
 
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